Novella Series 1 (Part 1)

For this review I will be splitting the novella series into three parts, since it somewhat naturally divides itself into Warhammer 40,000, Fantasy / Age of Sigmar and Others. This time I will be talking about the 40,000 books, which are The Bloodied Rose by Dannie Ware, Steel Daemon by Ian St. Martin and Auric Gods by Nick Kyme.

The Bloodied Rose, as one might expect from the title, is a sisters of battle story. While not quite as dark and searching as Requiem Infernal by Peter Fehervari, Ware does a good job of probing the nature of the order and exploring her character's motivations within a relatively short work. While the set up is reasonably typical; a squad of sisters return to a planet to investigate why it has suddenly gone radio silent, and the ultimate culprit is as equally inevitable (It's chaos. It's always chaos when sisters are about.) the journey itself into the planets dark secrets, seeing the sisters fray a little under the pressures of duty and curiosity is enjoyably well written. Ware has written in a few delightfully lore questioning moments, which was something I particularly enjoyed about this novella, and really took the story out of the 'enjoyable enough' bracket and into the 'worth reading', and definitely one for the Sisters of Battle fans.

Steel Daemon was sadly not so enjoyable for me. I was hoping for something similar to the gritty tank life of the Baneblade or Shadowsword novels, and though we are mostly presented with scenes from a warzone through the eyes of two very different tank commanders, it lacks any real sense of drama. While St. Martin is clearly a very capable writer, as can be seen in some incredibly engaging lines of description early on when we are taken over the battlefield through the eyes of a marauder pilot, I found that it just didn't quite fit into the general style and lore of the 40k universe. My main gripe, aside from a constant use of the books title to describe the Chaos possessed tank, the human elements seemed moderately at ease and incredibly well informed as to the nature of their opponent. Given that in several other books guardsmen are executed for even seeing a daemon on the field of battle, it is quite jarring to have them list off the specific names of what they are firing at. This was not aided by the fact that at certain pivotal moments, the tank crews were either experts and firing killing shot after killing shot, or surprisingly useless and missing a target barely yards away from them.

Finally we come to Auric Gods, which is easily the king of this particular trio. Kyme has created a very compelling tale that weaves many characters together and deepens the reader's visualisation of what is hidden away upon Terra. Delightfully, neither the antagonist nor protagonists are clumsy in their actions, challenging each other every step of the way and leaving the reader with the genuine possibility that either side could triumph until the last few pages. Although it mostly focuses on the Custodes, there are glimpses into other, even more obscure orders that defend the Imperium and it is an interesting contribution to the lore as a whole. Despite all of the above, most of the protagonists are actually not so interesting. This is less of a fault with Kyme's writing, and more to do with the fact that the Custodes are so insanely powerful that they are entirely unrelatable to the reader. Fortunately I found the the story as a whole to more than compensate for the lack of personality within some of the characters. While typical in the sense that it is basically the tale of Imperial warriors uncovering a Chaos plot, the exact nature and execution of it is incredibly unique and intriguing.